Tatzu Nishi

The Merlion Hotel. 2011. Singapore Biennale. Photo: Yusuke Hattori.

Nagoya, Japan, 1960. Lives in Berlin, Germany and Tokyo, Japan.
Although he has produced other urban-intervention projects, Tatsu Nishi is known worldwide for creating new environments and producing contexts in which citizens’ relationships with historic monuments enter the private arena. Using scaffolding and temporary building structures that offer public access to monuments from another viewpoint, the artist produces mobile living rooms and hotel rooms in which fragments of public monuments and religious icons become table dressings and domestic ornaments. His work humorously highlights small details of monuments which pass unnoticed in everyday experience and also contributes new meanings to the statues. By casting a relaxed and irreverent eye over urban icons his work breaks with the formality and the distanced way in which these works appear in the city. As we look at imposing monuments from a more egalitarian level, by removing the bases of the statues, historical heritage loses some of its aura and a less formal relationship is established. Tatsu Nishi has produced works that rearrange urban furniture, public lighting and experiments with cranes. He has also made work inside museum institutions, creating everyday contexts for modern works, such us installing a complete kitchen around a painting to provide an uncommon contact with art history.